Harvard in Tech AI Edition: Brendan Falk, Principal Technical Product Manager at Amazon and co-founder of Fig
Brendan Falk is the co-founder and CEO of Fig, a platform designed to make the command line more accessible and collaborative. Backed by Y Combinator and General Catalyst, Fig was acquired by Amazon in 2023. Brendan now serves as a Principal Technical Product Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he co-leads Amazon Q Developer and oversees CloudShell, Cloud9, and Fig.
Brendan co-founded Fig with his Harvard roommate, Matt Schrage. The pair applied to Y Combinator in late 2019, deferring their participation until after graduation to join the next batch. Their Y Combinator journey was characterized by pivots — they applied with one idea, interviewed with another, and pivoted again after acceptance. During the six months before officially starting the program, Brendan and Matt had early access to Y Combinator resources, which they used to experiment with various projects. Each project required repetitive command-line tasks, such as setting up databases and configuring tools like Postgres, Heroku, and Node.js. Frustrated by the antiquated and error-prone command-line setup process, they decided to build a solution — Fig.
Before founding Fig, Brendan was Brex’s first intern, where he secured over 50 partnerships, contributing to an estimated 250 new customers. Reflecting on his approach to sales at Brex, Fig, and Amazon, Brendan emphasizes the importance of understanding individual and organizational incentives. At Brex, for instance, he recognized that venture capitalists valued tools that helped their portfolio companies succeed. Similarly, at Fig, Brendan prioritized aligning team roles with employees’ career aspirations, creating career plans to help them reach their goals. This approach ties into Amazon’s “working backwards” philosophy: defining the desired end state and planning backward to achieve it.
Brendan highlights the importance of aligning pitches with company objectives, such as increasing revenue, reducing costs, mitigating risk, or improving efficiency. He notes that successful pitches address these goals directly, contrasting this with the now-defunct Juicero, a juice machine company that struggled to demonstrate its relevance to business goals, making it difficult for companies to justify its expense.
The “working backwards” approach was also integral to Brendan’s leadership at Fig. Starting with the company’s vision, he identified the necessary steps and team structure to achieve it. Recognizing that he and Matt couldn’t do everything themselves, Brendan focused on scaling through hiring talented individuals and creating roles aligned with their motivations and incentives — a strategy he credits for becoming a “force multiplier.”
Understanding Fig’s technical user base was another key challenge. Brendan immersed himself in the tools and platforms commonly mentioned by customers, researching and learning from their feedback. For the first two years, he wrote code to gain hands-on experience and deepen his technical understanding, which proved essential for better serving Fig’s users.
The acquisition of Fig by Amazon was a significant milestone. Brendan describes the decision-making process as thorough and transparent. While startups often default to striving for independence and eventual IPOs, he acknowledged that acquisitions are a common and viable exit strategy. Fig had focused on individual productivity, but its broader market opportunities in automation and collaboration were slower to develop. Brendan outlined four potential paths for Fig — monetizing individual productivity, expanding into collaboration, automating processes, or pursuing an acquisition — and shared this framework with investors. Supported by their investors, Fig pursued acquisition opportunities, ultimately choosing AWS due to its alignment with Fig’s goals.
Following the acquisition, Brendan led the integration of Fig’s product and team into AWS, migrating users and merging Amazon CodeWhisperer into Q Developer, where he became the product lead. Today, Brendan oversees a team of approximately 10 product managers and works with an engineering team of about 100, along with an applied sciences team. He has focused on scaling his influence by creating wikis and resources to address common questions from sales teams and other internal stakeholders.
Reflecting on his time at Amazon, Brendan emphasizes lessons learned in managing teams, scaling customer obsession, and addressing security and compliance in a high-stakes environment. Q Developer is a strategic priority for Amazon, and Brendan has embraced the challenge of balancing its importance with the need for operational efficiency.
For current students and aspiring entrepreneurs, Brendan offers two key pieces of advice: focus on engineering and technical skills, particularly in computer science and data science, given the growth of AI and machine learning; and define your own “end state.” By identifying long-term goals and working backward to plan actionable steps, individuals can better align their efforts with their ambitions. Brendan also shares his personal regret of not studying computer science earlier, acknowledging how much he learned from Fig but wishing he had those skills from the start.
